Neuropolitics.org

"If I were a liberal Democrat, people would say I'm the supergenius of all time" - Donald Trump

You might not believe
this, but Donald Trump has quite an interest in psychology, and not
just the junk that you might find at your local university. He is
one of the great sales psychologists of all time, and has integrated a blend of schmooze, shrewdness, and persistence that has propelled
him all the way to the Presidency of the United States.

Trump is a devoted student of Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist and thorn in the side of Sigmund Freud. Ironically, Jung also spent part of his career in
construction. Trump, in his book, How to Get Rich, describes his
interpretation of Jung: “Each of us has a persona. We need it
for survival. It's the face we put on for public use, and it can be
intentional or subconscious....It's a survival device.”

Of course, Trump added
“subconscious” to Jung's more narrow definition of the
persona, which is a “conscious” creation, and thus seems
to be confusing “persona” with “psyche”. But
then again, this is Trump. Psychologists are generally a bunch of
blabbering fakes anyway. Besides, Trump is a social Darwinist and an evolutionary psychologist, and Carl Jung was an early proponent
of this theory. (Note that Darwin originally proposed evolutionary
psychology in Origin of Species).

Trump goes on with his
Jungian interpretation: “The only danger is when people become
their personae. That means something has been shut off somewhere
along the line, and these people will end up hiding behind the false
personality that works professionally....Fortunately I am aware of my
public side as well as my private side, and, while I'm not one for
hiding much, I know there are several dimensions in which I operate.”

Indeed. How much of
Trump's ghost-written book, How to Get Rich, accurately reflects his
real thoughts about Jung is hard to tell, as this could simply be
intriguing filler introduced by his ghost writer. But Jung has had
considerable influence in business psychology, and Trump's
fascination could be real. But for the most part, he is suspicious
of academics, and considers self-interest to be the prime motivator
in all people, regardless of educational credentials. Note his
thoughts on medical doctors:

“I have come to
hate doctors. I think that, generally, they are a bunch of
money-grubbing dogs. I can tell you about countless instances when
doctors have ruined people's lives. As an example, a person that I
am very fond of had a foot injury that I believe should have healed
naturally, but instead, the doctor operated on it...Now, after over a
year of convalescence, this person is having a hard time walking.
This is one of many bad doctors I know of—there are too many
others to name. I just can't stand the bastards.”

Trump has a darker view
of human behavior than most, cultivated early in his life, in the
backbiting world of real estate development in New York City. He
has a particularly bad view of building contractors, and comically
writes “I believe about twenty percent of what contractors say,
and that's on a good day.” Trump describes an encounter with
some of his mafia-connected contractors: “I make a call to some
wise guy contractors who've been trying to cheat me. This can be a
crummy business because of the scum of the earth that it attracts,
but you have to do what you have to do.”

And anyone with
experience with contractors would find it hard to argue. It's hard
to tell which Trump dislikes more, politicians, the media, lawyers or
contractors, but this attitude applies generally to all people.
Writing about a fellow real estate associate, Trump says “he
doesn't much trust people in business, which is the way I tend to
be”. Trump continues: “Be paranoid. I know this
observation doesn't make any of us sound very good, but let's face
the fact that it's possible that even your best friend wants to steal
your spouse and your money....We're worse than lions—at least
they do it for food”.

Trump, often bragging
about his own phantom education at the Wharton business school, is
simultaneously suspicious of these same graduates, and goes off on the most
famous of the business consulting firms, McKinsey: “I like
consultants even less than I like committees”. Of course,
Trump is currently practicing what he preaches, and his disdain for professional economists is reflected in
his team of economic advisers. This cynicism extends across the entire
occupational spectrum, from scientists all the way to artists, as
Trump espouses the theory that famous artists are famous because of
their ability for marketing and social connectivity with the right
people.

So anyone of any
significance is playing a game, and it's a game that relies as much
on showmanship, timing, and personal marketing as it does competence.
And while Trump is a crafty and creative businessman, he understands
that his personal marketing has more to do with his success than
anything else. Trump is an extrovert, and while this has gotten him
into countless problems in public, it has been central to his success
in business.

Trump, early on, wanted to be an actor, and was deciding between an education in
economics or film school. It was indeed a battle between his
ambitions for both wealth and fame. But he finally chose real estate, since there
was higher reward and less risk, and his father's disdain for an
acting career weighed heavily on Donald's choice. Besides, a little
acting could still go a long way in real estate.

Witnessing his father's
struggles in real estate had disillusioned Trump. Fred
Trump specialized in middle-to-lower income construction, along with
being a landlord, which was a difficult and sometimes dangerous
business in the rent-controlled and highly political New York City.
There was always trouble with tenants, banks, city and federal
governments, mafia-infested unions, and wise-guy building
contractors. Building was a marathon of seemingly endless obstacles
and tense confrontations with everyone, with everyone's hand out
waiting to be greased. While Fred Trump was very successful at it,
he was an out-of-towner, and Donald longed for the greener pastures
and bright lights of Manhattan.

But there was one big
problem: real estate ate cash, especially Manhattan real estate. And
there are none so cash-poor as the land-rich. Navigating Manhattan
would force Trump to invent new angles that were both obstacle-ridden
and mind-numbingly complex. All Trump's deals were cash-poor and much
like a game of Mouse Trap, with every crazy piece magically working
together at just the right time for any of it to work.

It also required the
indefatigable Trump to establish business connections on a scale that
very few people can imagine. Trump, being a natural extrovert, could
effectively communicate with all walks of life, from wise-guy
contractors to egotistical architects to crooked politicians to
introverted engineers to people walking by on the street. Combined
with his maniacal persistence and ability to rapidly throw together
multiple solutions on a dime, he was a very difficult person to
stop. And from working with his father, he was already acclimated to
the dirty realities of New York City real estate development.

But to make large-scale
Manhattan real estate projects come together while contributing
almost no cash required a level of personal marketing as
big as all Manhattan. And at this, Trump was the master of masters.
Trump has never liked to take on the obvious opportunities in real
estate, there was too much well-funded competition for these. He was
after the unseen investments, something that nobody else had enough
imagination for, which allowed him to cultivate his deals with less
cash and little or no competition. He would need to rezone this, get
the money for that, get the option for this, get the variance for
that, get tax relief for this, and get these people to call those
other people. And voila, after dealing directly with hundreds of
people for months and sometimes years, he had the deal done.

All the while, Trump's
ego was catching up with the Wall Street elite that can make or break
any project, especially for the cash-starved Trump. Trump's
pathological self-marketing dates back to his early Manhattan
projects, where the risk and financial scale demanded an equal
expansion of credibility. As Trump understood, most of these huge
real estate deals are made without so much as filling out your name
on a loan application. It was all about who you knew and your
credibility to execute.

And this is where Trump's
particular genius for managing the media started. And it felt good. Other than developing
real estate and bedding females, Trump's favorite activity was to
read about himself in the newspaper. But this did not just serve his
narcissistic nature, it also helped him cultivate the image of a
young and dynamic developer that got things done quickly and to the
highest standards of the Manhattan elite.

Of course, Trump himself
is no epicurean, and his personal tastes are much more proletarian:
he hates opera, loves sports and junk food, and swears at wise-guy
contractors. He is not-so-secretly very cheap, and projects his
Trump brand while simultaneously cutting corners whenever he thinks
it can't be detected. In fact, Trump won the Spy magazine “cheapest
rich person contest”, after cashing a 13 cent check sent to him
as a prank. (Actually, Trump tied with his friend and Saudi arms
dealer, Adnan Khashoggi for this honor).

But after the completion
of Trump Tower, he believed that he had finally developed a “Trump
brand”, which was all about Manhattan upscale living, and he
played this up to whomever in the media he could get to talk to him.
And plenty did. He was young, handsome, interesting, and
controversial. And whatever was written about him, he read. If it
was good, he thought is was great. If it was bad, then it wasn't as
bad as no press at all. He constantly consumed newspaper media, for
several hours every day, usually early in the morning. This is
Trump's quiet time, where he maintains that he does his best
thinking. These days, it's mainly spent with TV news and the
internet.

Trump, in true salesman
tradition, can be very flattering. He does this frequently,
even as President. Flattery is a very practical and low cost
investment, and one that he believes helps him prosper with his huge
network of business and political contacts. You can see this today
in his unrequited flattery of Paul Ryan, someone Trump is extremely
suspicious of, but badly needs his cooperation. Trump initiates this
flattery in public, which will build some sort of transactional
relationship he will cash in on in the future.

Trump's guiding principle
of social conduct is attitudinal reciprocity. He displays this with
pretty much everyone, as he does in his controversial bromance with
Vladimir Putin: “It
is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so
highly respected within his own country”. As Trump explains
best, “I'm very good to people who are good to me. But when
people treat me badly or unfairly, my general attitude, all my life,
has been to fight back very hard.”

Trump
is very aware of his own polarizing personality: “people either
liked me a lot, or they didn't like me at all”. Such is the
life of alphas. Alphas exist to establish a dominance hierarchy with
themselves at the top. The price of this behavior is polarization.
But no worries, it's survival of the fittest. Trump goes
full-blown Darwinist in his book, Think Big.

"We
may live in houses in the suburbs but our minds and emotions are
still only a short step out of the jungle. In primitive times women
clung to the strongest males for protection. They did not take any
chances with a nobody, low-status male who did not have the means to
house them, protect them, and feed them and their offspring.
High-status males displayed their prowess through their kick-ass
attitudes. They were not afraid to think for themselves and make
their own decisions. They did not give a crap about what other people
in the tribe thought. That kind of attitude was and still is
associated with the kind of men women find attractive. It may not be
politically correct to say but who cares. It is common sense and it's
true and always will be."

This is the real Trump.
And this dark attitude seems to have gotten worse. Surviving in the
world of New York and Atlantic City real estate development is
certainly a soulless experience: mafia controlled unions and
contractors, critical newspapers, dirty politicians, backstabbing
bankers, and rent-controlled tenants. Trump sometimes feels defeated
by it all, but one particular incident seems to have scarred Trump
beyond all others. And that was in the early 1990s, when his
Atlantic City casino empire was on the brink of collapse. Trump
writes about the humiliation he experienced:

“The media had me
for lunch....I'll never forget the worst moment. It was 3 A.M.
Citibank phoned me at my home in Trump Tower. They wanted me to come
over to their office immediately to negotiate new terms with some
foreign banks—three of the ninety-nine banks to whom I owed
billions....There were no cabs, so I walked fifteen blocks to
Citibank. By the time I got there, I was drenched. That was the low
point.”

This nuclear meltdown
would deeply poison Trump's view of the media and his own business
network, whom he felt betrayed him at his greatest time of need. It would
also dramatically impact his subsequent investment strategy and he would
pursue the less cash-dependent licensing of the “Trump brand”
all over the world. Despite having a wary yet symbiotic relationship
with the media in his early career, Trump's subsequent media
confrontations became harsher and more litigious.

Around this time, Trump
had become acquainted with someone that would have as much an impact
on his public persona as Carl Jung. And that was Stern. Howard
Stern. Trump was a big Don Imus fan, and found “shock”
radio not only entertaining, but also an outlet for his extroverted
self-promotion. When Stern, an arch-enemy of Imus, came to the
forefront of the New York radio market, Trump marveled at how closely
Stern mirrored his own private thoughts, and how successful Stern was
at doing it. As controversial and politically-incorrect as Stern
was, he should have been ran out of town. But he wasn't. Instead, he was successful.
Very successful.

Stern, on a daily basis,
exposed his true unedited inner thoughts, wrapped in a thick veneer
of irreverent humor. And these weren't thoughts acceptable in polite
society. They could be sexual, angry, narcissistic, self-doubting,
insightful, maliciously joyful, bigoted, atheistic, empathetic,
cruel, and often about as politically incorrect as one can get. But
Stern's continual interleaving of humor disarmed the political
incorrectness to the point where you couldn't tell if Stern agreed
with what he was saying. It was brilliant. And Trump saw it all
happen.

Trump was a devoted
follower of Stern, often crashing his radio show and seeking his
friendship. Trump saw the marketing value of Stern's public
controversy, political incorrectness, and ongoing personal conflicts,
and many of Trump's shocking campaign statements can be attributed
directly to Stern's humorous political diatribes. For example, the
capturing of the Iraqi oil fields for American exploitation was
originally a Stern rant meant more as entertaining controversy than
Stern's real political philosophy. Another Stern rant was the
hostage taking of the families of terrorists, which was again
entertaining controversy, and something that Trump would use during
his campaign.

Trump's contention that
he never supported the Iraqi war is essentially true. Trump, like
many liberal politicians at that time, was publicly, but
half-heartedly, in agreement. There is certainly no reason for an
international hotelier to promote warfare anywhere, as it was bad for
business, and Trump had a keen interest in extending his empire into
the Middle East.

Stern's vicious public
conflicts were the inspiration for Trump's, who selected some of the
same adversaries as Stern, such as Rosie O'Donnell. At this time,
Trump adopted Stern's aggressive style of personal ridicule, normally
reserved for one's most private thoughts. For Stern, any personal
physical defect would be insulted. Trump followed this faithfully,
and the press followed these public battles as if they were major
stories.

Trump also adopted
Stern's unpredictable “stream of consciousness” speaking
style, although not nearly as effective as Stern was at it. Trump,
formerly a more contemplative and monotonic speaker, admired Stern's
ability to hold the interest of his audience, something that Trump
felt was beneficial for his own business. This involved a variety of
techniques, including the constant teasing of his on-air associates,
the hyperbolic rants on any and all subjects, the unpredictability of
what he would say next, and the subtext of humor that seemed to
pervade even the most serious subjects. Stern, above all, was an
excellent observer of human behavior, and Trump had a similar gift.

Trump also credits his
good friend, Regis Philbin, with his effectiveness as a public
speaker. Trump hates giving canned speeches, because “it's
usually boring”. Trump's theories on public speaking have been
very successful: “look for something in common [with your
audience] and lead with it....When you are on the podium, you are an
entertainer....Study Regis Philbin. He is relaxed and funny, and he
always relates to his audiences....Be a good storyteller....Think on
your feet....Have a good time.”

Republican politicians
are generally a wooden bunch, and exhibit low levels of affective
language and emotional recognition. They are usually monotonic,
rigid, and use few hand gestures while speaking, and even if one
agrees with their politics, they would still be wondering what was on
the other channel. But the animated Trump's unpredictability and his
irreverent style of politically-incorrect rhetoric kept viewers
riveted to their TV sets. He was a ratings machine.

The Trump rallies are
almost like rock concerts, where certain phrases induce audience
participation as if they were singing along to a favorite song.
Indeed, Trump would ironically play one of his favorite songs, “You
Can't Always Get What You Want” at the end of his rallies as if
he was channeling Mick Jagger. Trump is closely watching his
audience, and will get visibly unsettled if he feels they are not
responding well. He will then launch into one of his “greatest
hits”, like “Lock her up”, to get them yelling
again.

Facts can be really
boring, but hyperbole never. Hyperbole is a mainstay of the Trump
rally, or almost anything Trump says in public. This is quite
deliberate, and Trump even has his children speaking this way. Even
though Trump can slip into unrecoverable incoherence at times, he's
great theater, and one of the key reasons he is able to get so much
free press. Like all great salesmen, Trump's style is more important
than his substance.

Trump has been a
globalist thinker since the very beginning, and it was only a matter
of time since he left his home court of New York and took his brand
to the rest of the world. Firmly acclimated to the unseemly world of
real estate development, Trump wasn't going to shy away from the dark
cesspools that waited for him across the globe. Indeed, there were
tons of dark funny money cycling through a vast web of shell
corporations just waiting for a nice real estate venture to hide in,
and Trump's name was still hot in a lot of countries. Both New York
and Atlantic City were saturated with the Trump brand anyway, and his
enemies were powerful and watching his every move.

Two things bothered Trump
from the very beginning: international trade and nuclear weapons.
And to Trump, they were related. Long before complaining about China
for unfair trading practices, Trump was bashing Japan. For someone
so interested in real estate and gaming, his Japan bashing didn't
seem to follow, but the Japanese were using their dollar surpluses to
buy Manhattan real estate, and driving up the prices. And worse,
according to Trump, they didn't have to spend money on an army or
nuclear weapons, which gave Japan an unfair advantage in making
regular products, like cars. Unfair trading policies and the lack of
nuclear proliferation were not good for America, or even Trump's
businesses for that matter.

But Trump hadn't yet
fully developed his kamikaze style of generating public controversy.
That is, until he heard his favorite New York radio host, Howard
Stern. For a long time, there had been the strong scent of racial
bias among some of the Trump family. In the early 1970s, Trump and
his father Fred were successfully sued by the Federal government for
racial discrimination in renting their apartments. Further, in 1927,
Fred was arrested (not convicted) for attending a KKK rally. If
indeed Donald Trump was bigoted, to publicly air his private biases
was tantamount to suicide, and he was careful.

Howard Stern routinely
dispensed ethnic humor on his radio show, and nothing happened to
him. How Stern managed to avoid what would quickly dispatch lesser
men was the ability to make fun of everybody, including his own
Jewish heritage. Stern was an equal opportunity offender, and would
just smile when called a “hooked-nose Jew bastard” as if
it was his first name. After two decades of media political
correctness, Stern's show confirmed that bigotry was still
widespread. If anything, it had gotten worse. And particularly
among the Stern fans, which were predominately male and very similar
to the Trump demographic, ethnic bias was almost universal. Along
with the propensity to follow strong leaders.

Stern had once coined the
term “least racist person” to describe someone that had
no apparent racial bias, whom Stern marveled at as if he just
stumbled upon the first unicorn. This was something that Trump
picked up on and used many years later to describe himself when
questioned about his own racial biases.

But America was turning
in Trump's favor after 9/11. For one, the Republican electorate had,
overnight, converted their lingering contempt for Russia into
contempt towards Muslims. The only problem was that the Republican
political elite were not as enthusiastic, which constituted another
wedge between the people and the politicians, just like with Medicare
and Social Security. Second, the population of illegal immigrants,
3.5 million in 1990, shot up to 12.2 million in 2007.

Since the Republican
political elite (and their donors) like cheap labor, they turned a
blind eye to the empathetic Democrats and their Swiss cheese politics
on illegal immigration. To make things even worse, NAFTA, signed
into law in 1994, was a big contributor to the immigrant problem.
NAFTA decimated the small Mexican farmers to the tune of two million
displaced peasants, many of them heading north with no other place to
go, only to be subjected to the low wage confines of rural mega-farms
and inner-city American factories.

But the trifecta in all
this was the outsourcing of American jobs, which began to erode the
manufacturing infrastructure way back in the 1970s. One of Trump's
long time business associates, Jack Welch, CEO of GE, was an early
proponent of “shareholders-first” school of money, which
prioritized the interests of the GE stockholders over the jobs of
American workers. The outsourcing of manufacturing was on, and
America would experience a steady decline in manufacturing jobs, with
a brief increase from 1994-2000 (immediately after the signing of
NAFTA). But after 2000, it was in full swing again, led by the
global communications revolution that made the world seem 100 times
smaller. Ironically, Trump appointed Jack Welch, one of America's
first job killers, to his Strategic and Policy Forum to create
American jobs.

The bottom line in all
this mess was the destruction of the American middle class, which
started losing ground concurrent with the outsourcing of
manufacturing American jobs back in the 1970s. The trend was
remarkable, and reached a crescendo during the Great Recession of
2007-2009, which swept Barack Obama into the White House and
converted the GOP into political roadkill in 2008. But only for a
few years.

Obama was putty in the
hands of a global capitalism that could switch countries in a matter
of months to take advantage of a small 5% cost differential. How
does one reverse investment trends when the whole idea of capitalism
was basically a floating crap game where human welfare was an
afterthought to corporate survival? And while Obama survived in
2012, his party did not. Republicans were on the march again. But
there was a difference this time—the electorate and the
Republican political elites had never been more estranged. The
Republican politicians loved this new global capitalism: more
profits, less corporate taxes, and less regulations. What were these
working-stiff conservatives complaining about, anyway? Don't they
still love freedom and liberty? But unfortunately for this recently
branded Republican “elite”, no more Bushes need apply
here.

In the shadows of this
middle class death spiral was an evolving Trump, converting himself
into a full-blown global capitalist that was now more likely to
license his “Trump brand” in foreign countries than to
actually do the risky and troublesome development himself. If ever
there was a global capitalist, it was Trump, and most of his side
products employed cheap foreign labor. And foreign money was harder
to trace than domestic.

Trump had always been
musing the Presidency. But like most Trump decisions, which had
multiple potential outcomes, there had to be some sort of
demonstrable gain with each outcome. If he won, he won. If he lost,
he still won. Maybe even more than if he won. And in 2000, the new
Reform Party would allow him much easier access than either of the
calcified Republican or Democratic political machines.

Running for the Reform
Party nomination in 2000 gave Trump the insight into the marketing
value of a racially charged campaign. Pat Buchanan, the front
runner and eventual nominee of the Reform Party, ran a campaign
platform similar to Trump's 2016 version. Trump claimed that
Buchanan was a Hitler sympathizer that welcomed support of David Duke
(who supported Trump in 2016), and socially regressive with his
anti-abortion and anti-gay rhetoric.

And sure enough, Trump
lost and won. The impact on his businesses was positive. Even
still, Trump exited the campaign quickly, and said that if he won the
nomination, he would ask for “an immediate recount”.
Trump did not act like his brief stint as a politician was something
that he enjoyed that much, and said that it
"doesn't compare with completing one of the great skyscrapers of
Manhattan”. Trump, even for the extra money, was not eager to
jump back into politics, at least not for the sake of actually
winning.

Trump waited until 2015
to formally take another shot, this time as a member of the
Republican Party, which now had so many candidates that even a dark
horse could make noise. And just like his 2000 run, there were rumors of
another publicity stunt. Trump was unhappy with his “The
Apprentice” deal and its decline in ratings, and was perhaps
using his candidacy to increase his bargaining position with NBC.
This is very possible, since Trump's skeleton campaign staff did not
appear to be anything but a front for a fake candidacy. Trump, even
after some initial campaign successes, only gave himself a 30% chance
of winning, very reasonable considering Trump's usual standard of
over-selling. He even seemed relieved that it was only a 30% chance.

But the fragmented right
side of the electorate, after decades of middle class carnage, was
ready for him. They wanted a charismatic messiah that would free them
from bleeding-heart liberal political correctness and the Republican
pandering to the globalist tax-obsessed elite. And the ticket to this
show was the simmering right-wing racial strife that greatly
escalated during the Obama Presidency. If there ever was a Jungian
“collective subconscious”, racial prejudice was it. And
it was only made worse when people were struggling financially.
Trump understood this better than anyone, and he wasn't afraid of
being called a racist or losing any election. It was go time. At
the very worst he'd be elected President. That wouldn't be so bad,
would it?

Trump's
2016 campaign adopted Pat Buchanan's controversial anti-immigration
and racially-tinged America-first rhetoric, along with selected
“shocking” political positions from Howard Stern (e.g.
torture and oil expropriation), and then attacked the Republican
establishment as if he were a fiery left-wing Democrat. Trump
racially framed the NAFTA and TPP trade agreements and supported
universal health care in the face of universal Republican opposition.
Trump even took on Fox News, which was suicide to any Republican
candidate.

And
to the horror of the Republican establishment, Trump even courted
Putin. Trump, in 2000, immediately after Putin assumed the Russian
presidency, said that Russia is "totally
mixed up" for placing "people nobody ever even heard of"
in charge of missiles.
Of course, this initial shot at Putin was completely reversed by
2016. The billions in untraceable international funny money and its
need to be entangled in real estate ventures was way too big to be ignored.

After
running a reasonable facsimile of a political campaign, Trump's
charisma and message took over with the right side of the electorate.
Even Fox News got on board. Tax repeals, here we come. Surprising
even himself, he tried to recall his original thinking on what would
happen if he actually won the Presidency. And it wasn't well thought
out. What would it mean to his beloved business and family? What
about all his old scandals? His new scandals? Too many to remember.
And what would the press do to him now? And why am I thinking about
all this stuff now? It's too fucking late.

And, in the perfect storm
of American politics in November, 2016, he won. Trump had harnessed
Jung's collective subconscious, and rode it all the way into the
White House. Trump would recount his victory as if he were an athlete
recounting the big game. It was his greatest personal moment. There
he was, watching the election returns, and then one by one, the
states that no Republican had ever won, Trump won. And he would
recall it all many times in public, because to an extrovert, it was
only real to him if he could tell people about it.

Trump is the
Transactional President. Ideology is for the little people.
Everything is a transaction. You give me this, I give you that. You
screw me, I screw you. It's simple. Trump would love to deal with
the Democrats. But they have nothing but complaints, and Trump has
plenty of those. The Republicans are playing Trump much smarter.
They are going along, turning their heads with every crazy tweet and
legal issue that would launch a dozen investigations for a Democrat.
Sure, they could impeach him, but why risk a 2018 demolition of their
hard fought national dominance? Just hang it over his head and then
play dumb to the media.

Deep inside Trump is a
little voice. It's his conscience. It knows right from wrong. You
saw it when Trump talked about the needless suffering in Iraq. You
saw it when he talked about universal health care back in 2000. You
saw it when Trump refused to embarrass a fumbling Ben Carson by
politely waiting his turn to enter the debate stage. You saw it when
Trump said “I don't like to analyze myself because I might not
like what I see”.

Trump's conscience and
competitiveness have fought a million battles, but the smart money
has always been on his competitiveness. But then again, Trump is near
the end of his life, and surely must be reflecting on the legacy he
will be leaving to family and country. And surely Trump must have
thought about how proud his father, Fred, would be of him.

Trump attributes his sense of showmanship to his mother, Mary Trump.
One day, Trump's mother was watching Queen Elizabeth's coronation on TV, hopelessly lost in the spectacle and
pageantry of this defining moment in British history. But not Fred. Donald's
disgusted father could not take it anymore, and barked “For Christ's sake Mary. Enough is
enough, turn it off. They're all a bunch of con artists”.